CDC: State-Specific Trends in Lung Cancer Incidence and Smoking --- United States, 1999--2008

September 16, 2011

What is already known on this topic?

Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer in men and women. Wide variations in state tobacco control efforts, smoking prevalence, and lung cancer incidence have been observed in the United States. Lung cancer incidence has been decreasing for the past several decades among men but not among women.

What is added by this report?

Lung cancer incidence is beginning to decrease among women and is continuing to decrease among men in most states. Lung cancer rates are declining more rapidly in the West, which corresponds with smoking behavior; states with low smoking prevalence and high quit ratios are concentrated in this region.

What are the implications for public health practice?

Decreases in lung cancer incidence provide compelling evidence for state tobacco control policies, such as increasing tobacco excise taxes, enacting smoke-free laws, and funding policies to assist smokers in quitting. To continue these decreases in lung cancer incidence, current tobacco control funding for states needs to be increased to implement and sustain successful programs to reduce cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke exposure.

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Study: Pfizer lung cancer pill may double survival - WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina |

Study: Pfizer lung cancer pill may double survival - WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina |

By LINDA A. JOHNSON
AP Business Writer

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - A much-anticipated drug for advanced lung cancer from Pfizer Inc. appears to double survival over standard drugs against tumors with a certain genetic mutation, according to research presented Sunday.

The drug, called crizotinib, would be the first targeted treatment for the roughly 50,000 people who get this cancer each year worldwide. It might eventually produce annual revenue for Pfizer exceeding $2 billion.

The first overall survival data for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with the drug, called crizotinib, showed 74 percent were still alive after a year and 54 percent after two years, researchers announced at a huge cancer specialists conference.

Median overall survival, a key measure, hasn't been determined because more than half the 82 patients are still alive.

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Orlando Health launches lung cancer screening program

Orlando Business Journal
Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2011, 3:10pm EDT

Orlando Health launched a lung cancer screening pilot program June 1 targeted at smokers and ex-smokers.

The pilot program at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center-Orlando’s Rod Taylor Thoracic Care Center will focus on current and former smokers age 55 to 74, and will use low-dose radiation and CT scans to look for nodules

that don’t typically show up on X-rays. The hospital expects 20 percent of the people screened to need further testing and 2 percent to need treatment for lung cancer.

More than 18,000 people in Florida are expected to be diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011.

The cost of the test will be discounted from $1,500 to $375.

Read more: Orlando Health launches lung cancer screening program | Orlando Business Journal

South Carolina High School senior awarded John Atkinson Lung cancer Foundation Scholarship after losing parent.

The John Atkins Lung Cancer Foundation is proud to announce their out-of-state scholarship recipients: Jovanna Davis of Florida, Christiana Allen-Pipkin of Michigan, Sandra Whaley of South Carolina and Sharmae Young of Missouri. Congratulations to all of you!


About the John Atkinson Lung Cancer Founation

The foundation is providing leadership by increasing awareness of lung cancer and advocating for increased funding for research. We are dedicated to erasing the stigma that lung cancer can only happen to smokers. The foundation was named for John Atkinson, a nonsmoking father of three and devoted husband, who died of lung cancer in June of 2009 at the age of 40. The foundation carries the torch that John lit in the battle to end lung cancer.

To increase awareness of lung cancer in order to prevent the disease, to erase the stigma associated with lung cancer, to advocate for increased funding for lung cancer research, and to provide scholarships to students who have lost a parent to lung cancer. For more information - www.johnatkinsonfoundation.org

Treatment Shows Promise in Quelling a Type of Lung Cancer

Personalized Medicine Leads One Patient to Ask, "Can I go Scuba Diving?"
By Lisa Marshall of CU Medicine Today
University of Colorado School of Medicine

(May 2, 2011) The words "adenocarcinoma of the lung" required no further explanation. As a physician herself, Gene Burges knew what they meant.

"I told my husband, ‘I’ve had a really wonderful life,’" says Burges, 64, who received her grim diagnosis in April 2009. "I knew it was the end."

But nearly two years later, the dermatologist and associate professor at Medical University of South Carolina has kicked the chronic cough and night sweats, and—according to her grateful sons—has returned to her "energetic self." After watching the glowing orange beacons of cancer disappear from her scans, she went so far as to buy a new house this year.

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Lung Cancer: The Bold and Beautiful Perspective

Read comments from Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, promoting an upcoming episode of The Bold and the Beautiful airing on February 7th on CBS. The show will shed light on lung cancer and feature several famous surivors. Newmark lost his own father at a young age when he was only 13.

ALCMI Board Member with SC Ties

Harvey I. Pass, MD is Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Surgery, and the first Division Chief of Thoracic Surgery/ Thoracic Oncology at NYU School of Medicine. He joined NYU Medical Center in 2005 to lead the Division of Thoracic Surgery and Thoracic Oncology. His previous positions include Chief, Thoracic Oncology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, and Head of the Thoracic Oncology Section of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Pass received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his M.D. from Duke University. He completed his surgical residency at Duke and University of Mississippi. He completed his residency in Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Pass also completed a fellowship in Thoracic Oncology at NCI.

The Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI)
is dedicated to catalyzing and accelerating the discovery, development and delivery of new and more effective treatment options for Lung Cancer patients.

Abraxis' Abraxane meets lung cancer study goal

Abraxis BioScience's Abraxane meets key treatment goal in lung cancer study

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Abraxis BioScience Inc. said Wednesday its drug Abraxane met key treatment goals in a late-stage lung cancer study.

The company said Abraxane with Taxol, in combination with chemotherapy, improved the overall response rate of patients in the 1,052 patient study. The study focused on patients receiving initial treatment for lung cancer and compared the Abraxane combination with patients only receiving Taxol and another chemotherapy, carboplatin.

Abraxane is already approved as a breast cancer treatment. The company expects to ask for FDA approval as a lung cancer treatment in 2011.

Shares of Abraxis jumped $12.77, or 32.1 percent, to $52.62 in morning trading. The stock has traded between $24.52 and $57.60 over the last 52 weeks

New Way to Treat Inoperable Lung Cancer

New Way to Treat Inoperable Lung Cancer

Young cancer survivor touches senator

from NEWS & RECORD
news-record.com

Greensboro, North Carolina
By: Doug Clark, Staff Writer

Good Morning America: Did a Devoted Husband Find a Cancer Breakthrough?

Mayo docs identify gene for lung cancer growth

Jacksonville Business Journal reports -

“Lung cancer stem cells appear to be the major drivers in many common lung cancers, and in order for a therapeutic treatment to be effective, it has to disrupt these cancer stem cells,” said Dr. Alan Fields, the study’s senior author and chair of the Department of Cancer Biology at Mayo Clinic Florida. “We show that aurothiomalate, the agent now being tested in lung cancer patients, can, in fact, target these cells.”

The study was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the V-Foundation and the American Lung Association/LUNGevity. Other Mayo Clinic researchers who participated in the study were Dr. Roderick Regala, Dr. Rebecca Davis, Alyssa Kunz, and Dr. Andras Khoor. Also collaborating on the study was Michael Leitges of the University of Oslo.

Read more here.

ASCO: The August Bulletin from Cancer.Net

Check out the August Bulletine from Cancer.Net - trusted cancer information from the American Society of Clinical Oncology

THIS MONTH ON CANCER.NET: Olympic swimmer Eric Shanteau and ASCO leaders visit Wall Street, going back to school and work after cancer, where to turn for questions on clinical trials, and much more!

Jacksonville.com reports: Times-Union reporter free to fly again after cancer fight

After 8 weeks of chemotheropy, tests come back cancer free.
By Jessie-Lynne Kerr

The news from the doctors last week was very positive - the latest PET/CAT scan showed no return of the cancer that was discovered in my lungs March 10.

They even said I could attempt to return to a somewhat normal, at least for me, way of life and try the things that got put on hold while I fought the cancer.

The combination of aggressive chemotherapy and twice-a-day radiation killed the tumors after just eight weeks. Another week of chemo followed, depleting my white blood cell count and necessitating shots of Neupogen to stimulate the bone marrow to make more.

Most of June was spent getting daily low-dose radiation to the brain, since small-cell lung cancer, the type I have, has a tendency to return with a vengeance and go to the brain.

It was painless, but it took its toll in other ways.

My eyebrows now must be deftly drawn and brushed on each morning with the latest from Maybelline.

And the radiation killed parts of the stubble that had begun to reforest my bald scalp. At first it looked as if it continued to grow in that pattern, I would be sporting a Mohawk.
But soon, some of that melted away, too. Now it is just a circular patch of very dark stubble on the very crown of my head, and a rather ugly misshapen patch below. And I can't blame it on being a rookie at football camp.

Didn't someone famous once say that a woman's crowning glory was her hair?

It is hard to imagine that now in my case.

I faced reality and took care of some necessary stuff we don't like to talk about because it means we are confronting our own mortality. I have paid for my cremation and for the interment of my ashes at the memorial garden at church. A lawyer prepared my will, designation of health surrogate, living will and all that legal stuff to spare my son the tasks.
Cleared to go on my own way for three months without any further treatment, except for a monthly irrigation of the port in my chest to facilitate getting chemo, I am to call the radiologist if I experience any bone pain, seizures or cough up bloody mucous.

He told me it could be up to three months before the overwhelming fatigue I am experiencing eases up. My esophagus, which was burned by the radiation, is healing nicely and I am not too worried about the 20 pounds or so that I've lost due to a poor appetite because I was (and still am) overweight. But for those of you trying to lose some weight, find another way.

My lung doctor told me I was doing great but when I told him of my anxiety waiting to get the results of the latest scan, he told me that is called "scanxiety." I had a tendency to think the worst whenever a felt a twinge that seemed somehow different.

After all this, you would think I'd be due a vacation, right?

Well I have one planned. In February I bought a round-trip airline ticket to New York to attend a Hall of Fame induction ceremony at my high school on Staten Island. I had to cancel because of the lung cancer.

But now I have been cleared to fly again and I plan to go to New York the first week of October and visit a cousin. We plan to drive up to her cabin in the Adirondacks for a few days and take in Mother Nature's repainting of the landscape.

Life - now - is good. And with only a 20 percent chance I'll be here in five years, every moment is too precious to waste.

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USA Today reports: Surgeon general pick 'would do anything to heal'

President Obama on Monday nominated for surgeon general an influential rural family physician who has spent the past two decades caring for a shrimping community along the Gulf Coast.

Obama said Regina Benjamin understands the needs of the poor and uninsured and is a tireless promoter of wellness programs, making her qualified to be America's advocate during health care reforms.

Benjamin founded her non-profit clinic in 1990 for a diverse community of 2,500 near her home in Bayou La Batre, Ala., and had to rebuild it three times. It was destroyed twice by hurricanes and once by fire. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Obama said, she mortgaged her own house for the reconstruction and told the pharmacy to send her patients' bills to her when they couldn't afford their medicine.

"And for all that she's seen and overcome, she represents what's best about health care: doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients, those Americans who would do anything to heal a fellow citizen," Obama said. "When people couldn't pay, she didn't charge them. When the clinic wasn't making money, she didn't take a salary for herself."

Benjamin, 51, became the first African-American woman to be named to the American Medical Association's board of trustees in 1995 and last year received one of the MacArthur Foundation's $500,000 "genius grants." After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in 1984, she worked in Alabama as part of her obligation to the National Health Service Corps, a Department of Health and Human Services program that places physicians in underserved communities in exchange for tuition reimbursement.

Public health also has become "very personal" to her.

"My father died of diabetes and hypertension. My older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of HIV-related illness. My mother died of lung cancer because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke, just like her twin brother. My uncle Buddy, my mother's twin, is at home right now on oxygen struggling for each breath because of the years of smoking."

Those preventable diseases, she said, were why her family wasn't present with her at the nomination announcement: "While I cannot change my family's past, I can be a voice in the movement to improve our nation's health care and a nation's health for the future."

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USA Today reports: Did toxic chemical in Iraq sicken GIs?

Larry Roberta's every breath is a painful reminder of his time in Iraq. He can't walk a block without gasping for air. His chest hurts, his migraines sometimes persist for days and he needs pills to help him sleep.

James Gentry came home with rashes, ear troubles and a shortness of breath. Later, things got much worse: He developed lung cancer.

David Moore's postwar life turned into a harrowing medical mystery: nosebleeds and labored breathing that made it impossible to work, much less speak. His desperate search for answers ended last year when he died of lung disease at age 42.

What these three men — one sick, one dying, one dead — had in common is they were National Guard soldiers on the same stretch of wind-swept desert in Iraq during the early months of the war in 2003.

These soldiers and hundreds of other Guard members from Indiana, Oregon and West Virginia were protecting workers hired by a subsidiary of the giant contractor, KBR Inc., to rebuild an Iraqi water treatment plant. The area, as it turned out, was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, a potent, sometimes deadly chemical linked to cancer and other devastating diseases.

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LA Daily News reports: Equality and better treatment sought for lung cancer patients

As an emergency physician, Dr. Michael Weitz battles illnesses to save the lives of others.

In his own personal fight with lung cancer, he is battling the stigma that his disease carries.
Weitz, who is one of the 215,000 people diagnosed each year with lung cancer, knows what others think: "You did it to yourself," the Woodland Hills man said.

But Weitz never smoked cigarettes - did nothing he knows of that would infect the delicate tissue of his lungs.

Yet even for those with lung cancer who have never smoked, the condition comes with a negative stereotype. They often are asked, "Did you smoke?"

It's a perception health advocates say needs to be shattered. Why, they ask, should state or federal funding toward the detection and treatment of lung cancer be any different than, say, for illnesses associated with obesity, alcoholism or other kinds of cancer?

"We have to get to the point of saying it doesn't matter," said Kim Norris, a Los Angeles resident who founded the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.

The foundation's goal is to raise enough funds to lead to lung cancer research and treatment. The five-year survival rates for all stages of lung cancer haven't changed in decades, a result of little progress toward finding better treatments, Norris said.

Norris and others note that research for lung cancer treatment remains "under-funded, under-researched and under-reported," because government funders view it as the "the black sheep" of cancers.

"Just because smoking is legal - and the Department of Defense once handed out cigarettes during wars - doesn't mean (those who smoked) deserve (lung cancer)."

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ABC News reports: Senate Votes for FDA to Regulate Tobacco

Years in the Making, Senate Votes to Give FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco

Times have changed now that even tobacco states have smoking bans. Today, after two weeks of wrangling and a decade of considering the change, the U.S. Senate endorsed increased regulation of tobacco.

Senators voted 79-17 to regulate tobacco in the same way the government regulates everything else you put in your body -- from Froot Loops to aspirin.

At Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, organization president Matthew L. Myers called the vote "a truly historic victory" and "the strongest action Congress has ever taken to reduce tobacco use."

"Forty-five years after the first U.S. Surgeon General's report linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, the most deadly product sold in America will no longer be the least-regulated product sold in America," Myers said in a statement.

The bill would give the federal government the power to regulate cigarette ingredients, to ban the marketing of "light cigarettes" and to require graphic warning labels.

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The New York Times: George MacPherson, Theater Producer, Dies at 78

George MacPherson, a theater producer who helped bring down the curtain on bus-and-truck road shows and usher in the big-box-office age of polished national touring companies, died on Wednesday in Orangeburg, S.C., where he lived. He was 78.

The cause was lung cancer, said his daughter, Morag.

Mr. MacPherson, who got his first taste of show business glamour as a veterinarian with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, helped theater producers maximize returns on their shows by sending out touring companies with high production values and first-rate performers to markets beyond the big cities.

This approach, restructured in the early 1980s at American Theater Productions, where he was executive director, led to increased subscription sales and a boom for the tour business, which nearly doubled its gross revenues from 1988 to 1991.

“In those days, touring was pretty rudimentary,” said Miles Wilkin, the chief executive of the tour producer Broadway Across America. “George was adept at working with New York producers, acquiring shows and then realizing their full potential on the road.”

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Men with cancer bond in support group

It was about five years ago when Walt Beigegrain flopped onto his bed, crossed his arms and felt a lump on his chest.

“What is that?” he wondered. About five weeks later, after summoning the courage to seek help, his doctor initially confirmed that yes, he had a lump, but it couldn’t be breast cancer, because men don’t get breast cancer. Another physician echoed those same thoughts.

However, tests showed a different story, and Beigegrain’s breast cancer was in Stage II, which is a treatable phase.

“I figured, ‘So what, I have breast cancer,’ ” he said. “I can deal with that.”

Beigegrain did deal with that. He had the tumor removed in surgery. He now can talk openly about his breast cancer, but he knows other men suffer alone after being diagnosed with breast cancer or any other form of the disease.

They needn’t.

For the past few years, a local all-male group, Men Against Cancer Helping Others, or MACHO, has been attracting more members than any of the numerous cancer-support groups for women organized through St. Mary’s Hospital, said Debra Hesse, coordinator of cancer survivor programs for St. Mary’s Cancer Center.

At a recent meeting, men gathered around tables at a coffee shop near the hospital and greeted one another with strong handshakes and pats to the back.

Dressed in blue jeans, button-up shirts or T-shirts and sneakers or hiking boots, the men stick to an agenda that usually includes a guest speaker and review of a book related to cancer.

But outside of those general guidelines, men said they’ve grown to feel free to be themselves, and conversations can include guys asking each other advice about their battles with similar forms of cancer or tips on how to be a better husband to a spouse with the disease.

But the reason the meetings work, they said, is because a group dynamic helps ease the stigma men feel about getting cancer.

Also the focus is neither a “prayer session, or a pity party,” they said.

“The male instinct is, if there’s a problem, I need to fix it,” said Michael Appel, the lead pharmacist who helps run meetings.

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